


Suzaku's Inferno

by rustandstardust



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:47:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustandstardust/pseuds/rustandstardust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newly knighted and given free reign of the Pendragon palace, Suzaku happens upon the library, and there he finds a book, or rather, a poem - Dante's Inferno. Thus begins a series of nightmares he will never truly wake from, because his life is the nightmare itself. Set between S1 and S2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suzaku's Inferno

Although Britannia boasted a totalitarian regime in war when colonizing other countries, bending their iron wills and taking them under the wing of empirical rule, the emperor and his radical social Darwinist ideals was not a fool and he was not frivolous and destructive of culture. When a country was absorbed into the ever-growing borders of Britannia, although many were not allowed to practice religions or voice beliefs, any notable texts the civilization had produced were compiled into the vast library at the Pendragon palace, filling the shelves with volume after volume, some often-read, some left to accumulate layers of dust almost as thick as the covers themselves. The library was rarely visited any longer; sometimes the Knight of One could be found in a chair out of the way, perusing a thick volume he’d chosen that day, but for the most part it was deserted, a ghost town of dust. Suzaku had discovered it one day purely by chance. He’d had trouble sleeping and had gone for a walk; it was not new, sleep evading him had plagued him for years now. The first night he’d killed a man, he’d been awake all night, shivering and shaking on his scratchy wool blanket in the barracks, teeth chattering. After a while it had seemed the more men he killed, the less sleep he was permitted to have, and although his recent betrayal had not resulted in death, it still ate away at his mind; sleep proved impossible. Pendragon had been both fascinating and terrifying after first joining the Rounds, and when he wandered the hallowed halls he had gotten lost and ended up at the heavy double-doors leading inside.

 

There he had discovered it – the book that was to become his only friend in the first few months of his new life, the companion to his loneliness. The book itself was not old; its pages were not yellowed with age, nor did they sprinkle dust onto his always-pristine uniform as he looked through it. The text, though, that was where its antiquity showed, in the archaic way of speaking no one used anymore. Dante’s _Inferno_ , the cover red in blazing blood-red letters, raised just slightly above the thin leather cover hiding the nakedness of the parchment. It was a Christian text, unfamiliar to him, but it suited him, he thought, he who was trapped in a living hell that was multifaceted, this epic poem detailing each level of biblical hell.

 

Perhaps he was masochistic in reading it still – why read about hell when he was living in his own private example of it?

 

**First circle // Limbo**

 

_The sinful, the unbaptized, those who did not accept Christ. They are not actively punished, but instead are only separated from god - that is their punishment. Made of green fields and a castle with seven gates (the seven virtues); the wisest men reside here._

 

Reading about limbo had left him awake at night thinking, lying in his bed, fully dressed, lost in thought. Perhaps Lel- _no,_ he stopped himself; he wasn’t ready to say it yet. Perhaps _Zero’s_ goals were meant to be the new regime, and his loneliness here was a fitting reward. He hadn’t accepted Zero, he’d adamantly refused. Zero had been everything he fought against; tyranny, murder, power-hungry political icons claiming desires to make differences when in reality they sought only their own ends, the furthering of their own goals. In a way, his limbo was due to lack of acceptance – he would not be here were it not for Zero.

In physical reality, his limbo was a position he’d demanded as repayment, spacious living quarters the likes of which he’d honestly never had.  In his mind, in his _soul_ , however, it was the green fields the poem spoke of, green fields which in his memory symbolized the mornings he’d spent with Lelouch and Nunnally lying in grass so damp with dew it had stained their clothes, late afternoons dappled with green-tinted sunlight at the top of the Kururugi shrine. Even as the lines said, too, there was a castle in his world, a luxurious palace to which he had (mostly) unlimited access to, and in his mind the seven pillars of his once so lovingly idolized virtues tumbled down, shattering, gates to deeper understanding, potent self-loathing. He disgusted himself the more he contemplated it, the more acutely aware he became of how his virtues had become vices, how his attempts to be saint-like had succumbed into sin.

**

After a day of reading, a day of contemplation, he set the book aside. But was like an addiction, poisonous to his psyche and harmful to forward progress; like the drunk craved the liquor he craved the pain. It did not go back to the library; instead it slept nestled in his bedside table drawer. He kept the sleeping pills right beside it, for they too were a testament to his weakness, despicable things that he shouldn’t have needed. They brought the blissful oblivion of sleep, though, or his fatigue would have killed him; he’d have been dead on his feet and shot out of the air, crashed to earth in the Lancelot’s burning cockpit.

**

By the day of his old friend’s birthday, he could once again bring his lips to form the name, the two syllables he’d probably used in tandem with each other more than any others. _Lelouch_ , his heart whispered; _Lelouch_ , his mind cursed. He wanted to hate him, damn him to hell for everything, but he couldn’t. It brought on a fresh wave of self-loathing, waters so deep they threatened to drown him, left him floundering on shores of insecurity and shame.

 

He was almost out of pills, he realized, had he really been doubling up on them that badly? In so little time there should have been more than two fat barbiturates left in the burnt-orange bottle.

 

He tried the book as a sleeping aid instead, dragged it out of the drawer and into his bed; he would read until his eyes were simply too tired or too cloudy from crying to keep them open any longer.

**

**Second circle // Lust**

 

_Those who have let their appetites sway their reason, these are the first sinners truly punished in Hell.  A violent storm wages in this area; their souls are victimized by strong winds, showing the power lust commands to sway even the strongest of men in the breeze._

                The second circle of hell, according to the poem, housed those overcome with lust, those hungry for the physicality he knew all too well, desperate to fan the flames of desire into something destructive, something consuming. He read the part on lust in one day, his day off (no missions, no battles his presence was requested at), and that night he had slipped into a dream, the first in many months (the sleeping pills dragged him so deep, below his subconscious, that dreams were not even possible).

                In it there was Lelouch. A face so familiar, so now-maddening, so once-delightful.  Pale and black-haired, violet-eyed, he looked at him, beckoning, calling. They were at Ashford, on the roof, near the garden. He knew it, felt the same vertigo as he had that first day they’d met up there – the first fuzzy bits of the dream he watched, like a movie on decaying film. Lelouch smiled but didn’t speak, lips curved into a devious grin as he approached him, touched him in ways he’d never deny enjoying, in ways he felt even in the dream.  Everything was beautiful; there was only the warmth of the sun on his bare back and the smoothness of his old friend’s skin as they pressed together, fitting perfectly like puzzle pieces, naked and needy together.  Nothing hurt; there was warmth in Lelouch’s touches and a fire in his kisses not fueled by fury or frustration but pure simple want, desire, need. He watched Lelouch’s eyelids cover his violet eyes like curtains, the way he bit his lip to hold back moans when he was close to it, close to the edge; only then did he let his own slide closed. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, but when he opened his eyes again the vertigo hit worse, his position had changed and –

                Lelouch stood in front of him, naked but unaffected; the wind whipping his hair across his pale face seemed to do little but obscure the left eye he knew had concealed his Geass within amethyst depths. His smile had become a smirk, a cruel grin he’d fast learned the former prince was capable of.

“ _Come, Suzaku_ ,” the boy beckoned, “ _come with me and forget everything else but your desire, hmm?”_ In an instant he was pressed against him, grinding their hips together almost painfully, hands on his shoulders with long fingernails digging in, drawing blood, tiny rivulets he felt snake down his back. His hiss of pain became Lelouch’s hiss of laughter, of cruel mockeries, “ _Suza, fuck me and pretend nothing’s wrong, that’s what you love is it not?”_

He shook his head, willed it away, willed himself to wake up, prayed that any second the pain he felt clearly would draw him from dreamland, eyes shut tight in the hope that when he opened them Lelouch would be back, not Zero.

“You _were wasting time getting off when you could have been searching my room for evidence, Suzaku Kururugi…_ ” the dream-Lelouch snarled, sinking his teeth into his neck painfully, marking him as he’d loved to do. “ _you are worthless….filthy, lust-filled traitor, the mask was right behind the desk once as you bent me over it, you damn fool…”_

 

_Damn fool, filthy lust filled traitor_

_Damn fool, filthy_

_Lust-filled_

_Traitor, traitor, traitor_

_  
_

**

 

He was glad when he finally awoke, the book lying open beside him, flipped to show an illustration of demons with pointed tails poking a sinner, drawing blood with each jab and laughing as the wind blew sand into the wounds, salting them – for a moment in his lack of lucidity they all wore Zero’s mask, his cape.

**

Once again he put the book in the drawer, and once again a few days later removed it once more, opened to the next hundred lines of the poem, the next circle.

 

**Third circle // Gluttony**

 

_Guarded by Cerberus, the sinners here lie in a slush brought on by ceaseless icy rain. Those here are ignorant of their neighbors; for they were cold and selfish in life, caring only to satisfy themselves._

 

The lines made him think – had he been lying to himself all along? Had his wishes been purely self-serving as Lelouch had dared to suggest? His entire life he’d wanted a peaceful world devoid of fighting and pain. Joining the army had not been for himself, he could confidently say – there was no joy in the training, the (senseless) fighting, the (unnecessary) killing. Looking back on it now, what had been his intention? When confronted with the question, he had always responded that he had not tried to rise in the ranks, but even that had been a lie – what else would he have been attempting? He’d pretended to be shocked when they asked him to pilot the Lancelot, but that had been what he’d wanted all along, a chance to rise in the ranks, to induce change from within. By the time he’d gotten to Euphemia, perhaps he had been drunk with the power of possibility, the mere inkling of an idea that he may be able to accomplish something.

                Lelouch had made him question everything, realize things about himself he would have rather denied knowing, would have preferred never having discovered.

Another night, another dream (nightmare), though not as vivid as the first. In it he was cold, shivering, alone; face down in dirty snow unable to move. His titles echoed in his head, quiet, far way; he could barely understand them: Private, Warrant Officer, Knight of Honor, Knight of Seven, they were empty, they resounded.

Lelouch’s voice was clearer, he understood it well, the mocking edge Zero had always had to his voice (god, why hadn’t he recognized that voice and stopped him somehow, someway, before everything had gone up in smoke) – “‘ _Honorary Britannian’, how ridiculous Suzaku, honestly, you’re nothing but a damn Eleven to them, you always will be, even if you’re a Round and even if you got rid of me they will_ always _find a way to use you as a scapegoat, to claim your behavior is dangerous, remember that before you get drunk on the power they’ve given you.”_

**

He had awoken from that dream with his skin tingling, like little tiny needles of subzero metal were being dragged across his skin; the feeling on his back was just like how nails had raked down it only a few months ago.

**

After a while, the façade he’d kept for his own benefit was no longer even feigned; the book never stayed in the drawer. It was always on his bed, next to his pillow on top of neatly flattened blankets. It was his sleeping pill, his aid in his masochistic tendencies that he no longer even bothered denying, not to himself, nor would he to anyone else had they even bothered to ask. Reading about each circle, creating his own personal hell made him think, pulled thoughts he’d tried to bury back to the surface so they were unable to be ignored. It _forced_ him to live with himself, and it brought Lelouch back to him; Lelouch, the boy who had caused everything, who would, no matter how he denied it, always _be_ everything.

**

 

**Fourth circle // Greed**

 

_Two groups joust here, those who hoarded possessions and those who squandered them._

 

                They said often that greed was man’s greatest vice, the sin which they succumbed to most quickly, easily. He’d heard Bismarck speak of hubris, what he said was extreme pride, something that had been punishable in an ancient civilization by the gods themselves. Vaguely, perhaps it had been his sin too and this circle was another he could not escape belonging to; perhaps it had been greed that drove him to acquire so many relationships with those he encountered, instead of doing what was best for him and them, leaving well enough alone in favor of emotional isolation. He had held on to Lelouch’s friendship, his love; in greed he had kept him close, in greed he had let Euphemia love him and loved her in return. He saw their faces in his dreams; Lelouch, Nunnally, Euphemia; the student council, Lloyd, Cecile. He let them all care for him, greedily gobbled up their affection with an insatiable hunger, and now he regretted it, regretted it all. It was only going to hurt him in the end, he knew it, it already had. He fought; the devil on his shoulder bared fangs and sharp claws at the angel on his other, in eternal struggle within his mind – leave them, keep them, he didn’t know.

 

**Fifth and seventh circles // Wrath and violence**

 

_The river Styx makes the fifth circle a swamp in which those full of fury fight, and the sullen lie beneath the water. The seventh is made of three rings; the outer holding those violent against people and property immersed in a river of boiling blood and fire. In the middle are the suicidal souls, damned for violence against themselves. They are transformed into gnarled bushes, made to have their own limbs hang from their branches. The innermost ring holds those violent against god, the blasphemers, trapped in a desert of flaming sand._

                If there was any circle of hell he belonged in, it was the fifth; he belonged beneath the still water watching the others fight. His fury had been a sin, his wrath poisonous and corrosive; the chase he had given to Zero had been the angriest he could ever remember being. This should be his home, this dirty aquatic little corner of hell, and he knew it.

                He dreamed that night, the first time in days. It had been more worrisome than he’d cared to admit, the possibility of losing the ability to dream, the ability to hurt. In his dream he flew in endless combat, firing shot after shot and striking blow after blow, felling Knightmare after Knightmare; the Guren, the Gawain, hundreds of Sutherlands and Burais knocked to the ground in explosive little bits of metal, shrapnel flying, peppering the sides of his Lancelot. Around and around through what seemed like an endless army of metal he chased the Shinkiro, around and around he chased Lelouch, and the angrier he got. He cornered him, sent the black and yellow blur crashing to the ground, a resounding clang of metal as it hit the hundreds of metal carcasses littering the ground. There was one final blow, an explosion that seared his mind, and he was sure he was dying. Next he was facedown, looking through the surface of the water, clear and crystalline like ice, unmoving, undisturbed. A face swam into focus on the other side, before his eyes could bring it into clarity he already knew who it was going to be, a certainty in the pit of his stomach, but the moment he moved to hit him, fist intending to connect with his gorgeous (if not cruel) face, it met only glass, and Lelouch’s face dissolved into ripples.

                He threw himself against the wreckage of nightmares, slung his fists at the rock-hard metal until his knuckles broke, his fingers bent at unnatural angles and his wrists hung limp. It hurt, but not enough; the pain was not harsh enough to solve anything, he wasn’t losing enough blood. He wanted to die, he wanted to cease to exist. It was surreal; the moment he threw himself onto the jagged piece of black metal that had been an arm of the Shinkiro’s body it was as if he’d paused in midair, hovering above it. He just sobbed harder; it may have been immature, it may have been silly, but it was all he could do – it was the damn Geass again, he couldn’t die, he couldn’t rid the world of himself, his worthless existence. What was left of the arms and legs of the massive weapon flew up, flaying his limbs into bits; they hung from branches of trees for the crows to pick at.

**

The sixth circle, he refused to contemplate – those condemned for heresy, burning alive in flaming tombs. They tried to change beliefs; they went against religions and pre-instituted schemes of thought. That sin was not his – the change _he_ had sought had been meant for good, had been meant for ending the increasingly tyrannical rule of an empire that existed only to hurt, to control. _His_ change, Lel- _ZERO’S_ change had been only for personal gain, he had been the heretic if anyone was. He refused to think of it as his.

 

**

**Eighth circle // Fraud**

_Divided into ten bolgie, they are organized by crime. In the first, pimps and seducers are whipped by demons as they trudge along; as they used the passions of others to drive their bidding, the demons drive their feet. Within the second, flatterers are damned for their weaving of words, steeped in excrement. In the third, those who paid for offices of power in the church are placed into holes in the ground with feet lit on fire. In the fourth, astrologers and false prophets have their heads twisted around, punished by now having the ability to see before them because they tried to predict it. In the fifth, corrupt politicians reside in a lake of boiling pitch. In the sixth the hypocrites walk listlessly, garbed in leaden coats that weigh them down and make spiritual progress impossible. Seventh, the thieves - snakes and lizards chase them, stealing from them as they took from others. In the eighth, fraudulent advisors are concealed within their own special bits of flame. Ninth, those who caused discord - their bodies are hacked into bits as they divided the lives of each other. In the final, the tenth, those who are a disease to society are inflicted with various types of diseases._

The eighth circle, the only other one he didn’t belong in; no, that was Lelouch’s. Fraudulent and false, he had perfected the mask he showed to the world and it had been a lie. Suzaku thought he would fit in best in the fourth area, where the false prophets walked endlessly with heads turned around at unnatural angles. He pictured Lelouch, neck broken (god, how did he even manage to picture that; how far had he fallen to even _think_ of a friend in that position) but with that same arrogant grin, still speaking, still pushing his views on everyone, making false promises.

**Ninth circle // Treachery**

_These sinners are distinguished; their sins are more punishable, as they betrayed a special relationship of some kind. Round 1 holds those who were traitors to family, Round 2 those traitors to political entities,_ _their own countries. Round 3 holds those traitors to their guests, and Round 4 those traitors to their lords and benefactors._

This… _this_  was his. His very own, personally crafted little corner of hell, the lowest he could sink without being the devil himself. He couldn’t even tally up all the ways now that he’d betrayed his own ideals, country, _friends_. In joining the Britannian army, he had betrayed his family, his country, his own ideals. He’d convinced himself that it was for a greater cause, but now he wasn’t sure. Had he betrayed everything for no good reason? Yes, he held the title of Knight of Seven, but what could he really do?

                Most of all, he’d been a traitor to Lelouch. He hadn’t thought; there had to have been better ways he could have handled his discovery, done something other than taken him before his merciless father and thrown him down. He was the worst type of traitor he’d ever heard of, other than Lelouch; his friend and lover who had to be in hell right there alongside him.

**  
**

**Center // satan**

_At the center sits the devil himself, cast there for the ultimate sin – rebellion against god._

                At the end of his long battle with nightmares, the end of his quest to finish the thousands of lines set in neat typeface, he met Lelouch. He’d refilled his sleeping pill prescription; he foresaw a series of more sleepless nights on the way. He’d taken enough to lack lucidity, but not enough to sleep, and in those moments when he didn’t know the ceiling from the floor he met Lelouch. The Zero robe pooled around his thin form as he sat in the chair at Suzaku’s desk, on leg crossed over the other, presiding.

“I am Lucifer,”

                _Lelouch_

“I was cast from heaven,”

                _Britannia_

“And I declared war upon all that is good.”

                _All that is your father’s,_

“The almighty – “

                _Father, the root of your hatred, I know, ‘Louch, you’re determined to kill him, but he erased your memory, it won’t, it couldn’t, it won’t return, there’s no way you could ever make him –_

“will someday see the error he made in abandoning me, and he will”

                _No he won’t, he doesn’t care, I’ve spoken with him; he doesn’t care if you live or die as long as you play the part of the pawn right, there’s no way he’ll ever_

“bow to me.”

“That’s impossible,” Suzaku said out loud to an empty room, to walls that were undulating with the fuzziness of his vision, flipping through the book and peering at the tiny text, slurring half his words. “There’s nothing…nothing in here about Lucifer ever beating god, nothing about him ever winning…”

“I will rewrite history, Suzaku. I will do what you’ve deemed impossible, _don’t think you’ve stopped me._ ”

The next day, Zero appeared on the television screen; every news channel filled with that familiar masked face. He felt sick to his stomach; sick with surprise, terror.

He should have known that Lelouch, even as a figment of his imagination, would always be one step ahead.


End file.
